Category: Yoga

You re going to be amazed at what happens next

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment


One of the first Tara Stiles videos 2008.

Dear Sara,

I don’t want to pretend the past two weeks were a steady, fast moving line going up.
Although it might be easy to conclude that, given the spectacular result.
Rather it was a steep line downhill, which bounced back after a 72 hour low.
Just.

So I m going to give you the management summary,
and I hope for all our sakes, this is the shortest email I ve ever written to you.
Because there is so much to say, attempting to actually explain myself is a lost cause to begin with.

All in all, I ve come to the conclusion that my creativity was intimately linked to my job as a yoga teacher.
Although I still stand by my decision to no longer focus on group classes, and can look back with compassion at my earlier attempt to try to switch to (also) teaching privates – I now see that taking this new yoga business out within months, because I failed to make it work, has had some unforeseen consequences:
Essentially, I lost myself.
Which is why I have chosen to become a private yoga teacher again, starting 17 April.
This is 16 years after teaching my first paid yoga class, the start of my career.
I ve already registered my yoga company, tomorrow night I have an appointment to take a look at a new yoga space.
I m going to teach under two different names:
My real name, where yoga will be tied to a childlike energy, like Fischer Price yoga! But it’s an energy of honesty, and vulnerability.
Instead of writing my, eh, Fischer Price yoga book!, I ve decided to share the schedules on my blog and create yoga videos to go along with it.
So I m curating the Dutch yoga book online and creating instructional videos, at the same time.
So Fischer Price yoga is under my real name.
As Lauren Harteveld however, yoga will not be Fischer Price at all, but linked to feeling your power as a woman.
I will support this with my Dutch LSH blog (the one I abandoned two weeks ago), and also tie this to my LSH YouTube channel and my work as a coach. 
And I ve refound my love for Tara Stiles, whose work I started following around 2009.
The prime of my yoga career!

Either way, to sum it all up, I ve chosen this direction, and feel really good about it. This way yoga, and creativity (as a writer and YouTuber) can co-exist. Like they always have.
If I had followed the pretty delusional call to become successful at working in a real job (I will refer to this as my “savior fantasy” where I m saved from being an entrepreneur) my creativity would not have been provided for.
Here are the ways teaching yoga, has sustained and inspired my writing: 
1. Yoga provided money, in other words, the means to write.
2. Yoga provided ample free time to write.
3. Yoga provided a topic to write about.
4. Yoga provided a reason to create, as all my Dutch content was linked to the yoga studio.
5. Yoga provided a reason to quit the desk work around 5
6. Yoga gave reason and meaning to the evenings, it provided much needed connection.
That is the main reason why my initial future dream job, on the payroll yet working from home with cats, is no longer my dream job at all.
I want to go out into the world and do something!
But unsurprisingly, I want it exactly on my terms. lol Yoga gave that.
2, 3 classes a day max.
So all in all, I started realizing that I missed the structure yoga had given me.
I have chosen to be a yoga teacher again, a private one. And a coach, but I already had that.
And if I have to take another job, because it’s not providing an income, than I will do that.
But I can’t NOT be a yoga teacher. Just like I can’t NOT be a writer (really)
And just like I can’t NOT do marketing, because I love that too.
Marketing = also my creative expression.
So being an entrepreneur, being a yoga teacher, and being a writer, are all intimately connected.
I quit writing diaries, personal things, a few weeks back. Because it was driving me mad.
But do you remember the book on consent play, in January?
The one that derailed my entire life?
By now I m convinced that didn’t have anything to do with the topic, as I originally assumed. It was because being a writer, without the yoga and the entrepreneurship, is painful.
And no joy at all.
The only way to restore writing, and making videos too, is by acknowledging that I don’t have a choice to become a successful business person, or Vice for someone else.
That was just a dream. (of being saved from myself)
This is who I am: An entrepreneur, a yoga teacher, a creator.
In no particular order, as long as it’s ALL of it.

~Lauren

Follow the marshmallows. *

my offer for private yoga will appear on my Dutch site:
Zeg maar Lauren

Upcoming:

I ve rebooted my YouTube Channel!
Subscribe to my YouTube and get my new daily videos. 

Yoga Challenge

After being brough back to basics by Tara Stiles, I remembered I have an entire archive on a yoga challenge I did.
It was 2011 I think, and it lasted for 21 weeks!
It’s a weekly challenge, based on the book Slim Calm Sexy Yoga
This was also the first yoga blog I ever had.
I m going to retrieve that diary, and their schedules, and reboot this home yoga challenge for this site.
Stay tuned!

*) Follow the marshmallows is based on the idea that the most likely way God will show you your path, is by making it look urgent and/or very appealing.
You will feel an urge, a rush of energy, a pull towards it!
Like wanting to pick up teaching yoga 😉
It will actually require effort to not do it, to restrain yourself. 
Don’t restrain, eat the marshmallow.  And more likely than not, the second marshmallow will appear immediately after.

Work with me { my first sales page! } 

My diaries en erotica are available at 
my BOOK SHOP
25% discount on all prices
If you check your cart, you can select your store
f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

Nederlandse boeken kun je ook direct bij mij bestellen

About this blog

Is the seventh chapter of
7-figure Rock Star Writer part 2: Always eat the marshmallow

The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.

Follow on Facebook or Twitter,
NEW connect on Linkedin

coming soon: new books

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- verhalen over mannen, macht en dagjes uit (Dutch)

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow this blog. The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.

The thing that brought me back

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment
There were multiple things that brought me back to yoga:
The realization that I had fallen in love with making yoga schedules, and my home practice. Right from my first yoga class!
I had already been doing these things late 90s, before I had even started my teacher training.
And I had also liked the private classes I had taught, especially in the final year my studio had existed. The 1-on-1s with these students, in my basement studio.
Yet I still had not decided I was going to make a come-back as a teacher.
Too hung up perhaps on not wanting to go freelance again, with something that had not provided a decent living in the final years.
So yes: I was going to pick up making yoga schedules, and do my own practice.
But no: I didn’t intend to make my living out of it because duh, that wasn’t working.
Instead, I was going to pursue a career in business, and no longer be bothered with the worries of running your own yoga studio in a market that had gotten increasingly competitive.
But the more concrete the career became (what business, what job) the less enthusiastic I became.
To make matters worse, in the meanwhile I had stopped writing.
Without my yoga classes at night to keep me grounded, and my 5 or 6 PM deadline to shut off my computer, my place in this world had become disturbingly unclear.
Was it really my purpose to just publish my four new books, and write a diary post each day?
How on earth was I going to fill my days, in a way that didn’t feel totally isolated?
The carefree writing I had planned on doing, unbothered by worries of having to “make” my studio work, turned out to be a trap…
So on one hand there were all these red flags surrounding my new job as an employee, and my side hustle as a writer.
And on the other hand there were these elements of yoga I had liked.
Not to mention the delicate equilibrium writing and yoga had turned out to be!
When I left my yoga studio behind in 2018, after teaching for 15 teaching and writing for 12 years, I had insufficiently realized, they had been a team.
The two had developed in conjunction.
And although it was understandable that I had cherry picked writing, and discarded yoga because it was no longer making enough money-
it was also not the end of the story.
Writing had never lived, without yoga.
As the months went by, and I grew increasingly desperate about my unsatisfactory writing and the big question of what to do with my life. It felt like I was going in circles.
And then little pieces of the puzzle started to appear. I wanted to coach, as Lauren Harteveld. I wanted to share my yoga schedules on my blog under my real name.
In the slipstream of sharing my yoga schedules there, the desire grew to to start teaching privates again as well.
And after setting up the idea to start teaching privates under my real name, I wanted to start teaching privates as Lauren Harteveld as well.
I have not created the offer yet, but it will be private yoga classes for women, here in Nijmegen.
Yet still, the vision wasn’t complete.
They were just pieces of the puzzle. I couldn’t feel what they were leading up to.
And then the strangest thing happened.
I saw a photo on Facebook from a Strala studio, the studio of Tara Stiles.
And I got it!
I reconnected back to 2005-2010 (rough estimate!) when I was suffering from Dutch yoga escapism, by reading Yoga Journals, an American yoga glossy, and also watching the earliest videos from Tara Stiles on YouTube.
By the time she released her book, Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, I practically camped on Amazon to be the first to order.
In the following years she became better known, and all her later books have been translated to Dutch.
But having that first one, still makes my heart sing!
And seeing that photo, from the Strala studio in New York, a place that no longer even exists because Tara Stiles and her family moved up into the mountains – but the picture of that studio brought me back to the time when my identification with being a yoga teacher had been strongest.
The urban, American, studio vibe I had been absorbing 2005-2010, or maybe 2011.
I saw that picture and I knew:
That is me.
THAT is my teaching vibe.
Tara Stiles may have moved up into the mountains to connect with nature, but here is where I dwell… here is where the heart is.
Inner city yoga life.
Between the cabs, the noise, the busyness.
I am an inner city private yoga teacher.
Namaste.

 

~Lauren
Follow the marshmallows. *

my offer for private yoga will appear on my Dutch site:
Zeg maar Lauren

Upcoming:

I ve rebooted my YouTube Channel!
Subscribe to my YouTube and be the first to get my new video Monday April 1

Yoga Challenge

After being brough back to basics by Tara Stiles, I remembered I have an entire archive on a yoga challenge I did.
It was 2011 I think, and it lasted for 21 weeks!
It’s a weekly challenge, based on the book Slim Calm Sexy Yoga
This was also the first yoga blog I ever had.
I m going to retrieve that diary, and their schedules, and reboot this home yoga challenge for this site.
Stay tuned!

*) Follow the marshmallows is based on the idea that the most likely way God will show you your path, is by making it look urgent and/or very appealing.
You will feel an urge, a rush of energy, a pull towards it!
Like wanting to pick up teaching yoga 😉
It will actually require effort to not do it, to restrain yourself. 
Don’t restrain, eat the marshmallow.  And more likely than not, the second marshmallow will appear immediately after.

Work with me { my first sales page! } 

My diaries en erotica are available at 
my BOOK SHOP
25% discount on all prices
If you check your cart, you can select your store
f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

Nederlandse boeken kun je ook direct bij mij bestellen

About this blog

Is the sixth chapter of
7-figure Rock Star Writer part 2: Always eat the marshmallow

The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.

Follow on Facebook or Twitter,
NEW connect on Linkedin

coming soon: new books

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- verhalen over mannen, macht en dagjes uit (Dutch)

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow this blog. The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.

Be clear where you want to go, do research, plan your route. …I M KIDDING! JUST FOLLOW THE MARSHMALLOWS!

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment
A week ago I made a seemingly insignificant decision for my business:
To stop writing in Dutch, under this name Lauren Harteveld.
I had a thousand reasons to do so.
Okay, just one – I wanted to focus on being a coach, not a writer.
But from that one decision, a whole series of events unfolded.
All amazing stuff and currently I m entering the most daring, boldest two months of my life.
It s FULL-ON!
But exciting indeed.
As I m looking into how I want to proceed, I find myself thinking about repurposing an old website and an old domain name from my old yoga biz, to support my new local business, teaching private yoga.
But I just wasn’t feeling it, you know?
I have an incredibly cute alter-ego in Dutch, and from that place I ve made a soft launch, for this new yoga business.
It’s like the Fischer Price version of private yoga, so cute you can eat if with a spoon.
I love that.
But although I support the idea of setting up a “real” page, offering “real” private yoga, the kind that rock stars and badass men and women are on the lookout for and recommend to each other,
I just wasn’t feeling that vibe with this old professional website, which was tied to my old/ my real name. It felt like breaking a promise I made to myself half a year ago;
That I never had to work under my real name again, ever.
from now on, Lauren Harteveld would do all the work, earn all the monies, and she’d find a way one or another. Either working for a boss or for herself.
To breathe life into my new and exciting yoga business, but using my old website, didn’t feel expansive and joyful at all.
And then I got it!
Oh.My.God.
What if… what if!
I start teaching yoga locally, AS Lauren Harteveld!
What if I use my Dutch Lauren Harteveld site, the one where I had quit writing a week ago, and made that my site for private yoga and in person coaching here in Nijmegen?
I felt so excited, I started writing this blog post right away even though I m in the middle of composing a very important and complicated email to my accountant.
So you see?
I didn’t plan ahead at all, when I decided to quit writing about films and books, for my Dutch LS Harteveld site.
Yet after that, in the still after the storm, my cute baby alter-ego picked up the idea to teach Fischer Price yoga.
And then, with my online coaching offer here on this site, and Fischer Price yoga locally, I got inspired to dial up the heat on my biz.
And started thinking about a professional yoga website;
and THEN (but only then!) the light bulb moment came to start teaching privates and do in person coaching as well, both as Lauren Harteveld.
Instead of just baby yoga 😉 locally
and online coaching.
So two new, very exciting things added to my business overnight.
If one week ago, I had been too fearful, or in doubt about quitting writing in Dutch, none of this would have happened.
Not Fischer Price yoga, for people who connect with the cutest, sweetest version of me.
Not in the person coaching, here in Nijmegen.
Not an entire new career of Lauren Harteveld teaching privates.
Nothing.
So you see:
Don’t plan anything.
All you have to do is walk away from what doesn’t feel right and take the step right in front of you. Even if, and maybe especially, if you cannot see the whole staircase.

Just follow the marshmallows.

~Lauren
Follow the marshmallows. *

This English post was a sneak peek!
My new Dutch/Nijmegen coaching and yoga offer will be posted here on a joyfully revamped Zeg maar Lauren,
page as soon as possible
Subscribe on that blog to get it in your mailbox.

*) Follow the marshmallows is based on the idea that the most likely way God will show you your path, is by making it look urgent and/or very appealing.
You will feel an urge, a rush of energy, a pull towards it!
Like wanting to pick up teaching yoga 😉
It will actually require effort to not do it, to restrain yourself. 
Don’t restrain, eat the marshmallow.  And more likely than not, the second marshmallow will appear immediately after.

Work with me { my first sales page! } 

My diaries en erotica are available at 
my BOOK SHOP
25% discount on all prices
If you check your cart, you can select your store
f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

Nederlandse boeken kun je ook direct bij mij bestellen

About this blog

Is the fifth chapter of
7-figure Rock Star Writer part 2: Always eat the marshmallow

The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.

Follow on Facebook or Twitter,
NEW connect on Linkedin

coming soon: new books

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- verhalen over mannen, macht en dagjes uit (Dutch)

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow this blog. The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.

Heart jumping with joy! Back teaching yoga!

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment
me in my yoga studio yesterday night: I kept the location on as a business address

Nooooo, I didn’t see it coming!
Ha ha ha.
And I m sure I ll have so much to tell about this epic turn of events, I expect I will not be able to shut up about it.
For example, isn’t it legendary, that when I did my first yoga session at my abandoned studio, the music I used was Bon Jovi’s album “This House is Not For Sale”.
????
!!!!!
I was gawking at my cd player (yes I have a cd player), as if I was hearing the words for the very first time.
This house is not for sale
Where memories live and the dream don’t fail
This house is not for sale
Coming home
I’m coming home
I cried. And not because I knew my body would probably do its own crying during yoga, after having been neglected ever since I stopped teaching.
I cried because it was all so magical, everything about it.
Having the worst year of your life, 2018. Failing to save my business with a switch from group classes to private studio.
It had all been very emotional, and I didn’t want to let students from group classes down.
The chance I had at making a successful switch to teaching privates was undermined by countless things, but yeah, I couldn’t fully cut the cord either..
Not until it was too late, because I was already burned out.
I see now, walking away from group classes was a necessity because of one major thing.
And it wasn’t because I was teaching nights!
In an earlier piece, After 15 years I quit teaching yoga (top 3 things I look forward to) dated July 23, 2018,
I speak about looking forward to having my nights off.
The majority of my group classes had been at night time.
And I just loved the idea of working (writing) until 5 PM and then go to the city for a movie or a date.
But social events or going to the movies, turned out to be far from an ideal way to spend your evenings. You get home too late, or in a mental state you didn’t predict.
And ending your day at 5 PM also means that it needs to be productive.
But I just CAN’T work at my desk for 8 hours a day! I just can’t!
If I ever go work for a boss, regular workdays will be a must, and I will not be able to afford to essentially graze on my work hours, from 6 AM to 11 PM.
I start with sharing social media posts while still in bed.
Then it can go anywhere, from studying coaching programs, to writing a blog post while still in bathing robe. Walking around with a hair mask all day.
And sometimes I shower and am behind my desk at 8, beautifully dressed.
But I like to walk away from my desk. Work a few hours and then go for a bike ride or something.
I really missed the sense of direction, night time classes gave me.
They provided some context, and also gave meaning, to that whole day of being by myself doing whatever I wanted 🙂
So free nights turned out to be far from ideal.
That’s one reason why after this long period of rest, I am now giving last year’s original plan, to revive my business by focusing on teaching privates, a second go.
And I have a solid reason for that:
Because working 1-on-1 is my biggest strength
My relationships are perfect, and I loved all my yoga students and things have always been amazing whenever we’re one on one.
For friends, family, students, coaching clients.
Co-workers.
Now that I realize that, having my own business coaching and teaching private yoga, has become a top priority. Because it would make an absolutely dream business!
Last year I didn’t know WHY I wanted this private teaching biz: now I do!
Because working one on one is the biggest contribution I can make to society, to Life, to everything.
But I am going to do one thing differently, compared to how I used to do business.
Which is that I am never again, going to make a whole song and dance out of my offers or the way I market them.
Because my experience is this:
Either it’s gonna fly.
Or not.
The biggest mistake I made in my yoga business, is that I invested in marketing for four years, trying to make my studio profitable again.
When the first ten successful years, I didn’t do anything, or hardly anything.
I got the students automatically, and I think it’s because I was just assuming that either they’d come, or they wouldn’t. And from the two, the most likely one was that they’d come.
But I lost my faith.
In retrospect I can see when that happened (2012-2013, sad story, separate blog post! 😦 ) But I had lost faith in myself.
And that was not something that could be fixed with four years of marketing.
So this time around, I m gonna coach, teach, and sell books.
And if God wants it, these three things will be a new, and full income.
And if not, I m going to take a job, and still coach, teach, and sell books in evening hours.
Because working weeknights is the absolute best way to spend them.
I know that now 🙂

~Lauren
Follow the marshmallows. *

*) Follow the marshmallows is based on the idea that the most likely way God will show you your path, is by making it look urgent and/or very appealing.
You will feel an urge, a rush of energy, a pull towards it!
Like running to the basement on a Saturday night!
It will actually require effort to not do it, to restrain yourself. 
Don’t restrain, eat the marshmallow.  And more likely than not, the second marshmallow will appear immediately after.

Work with me { my first sales page! } 

My diaries en erotica are available at 
my BOOK SHOP
25% discount on all prices
If you check your cart, you can select your store
f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

Nederlandse boeken kun je ook direct bij mij bestellen

About this blog

Is the fourth chapter of
7-figure Rock Star Writer part 2: Always eat the marshmallow

The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.

Follow on Facebook or Twitter,
NEW connect on Linkedin

coming soon: new books

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- verhalen over mannen, macht en dagjes uit (Dutch)

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow this blog. The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.

I m breaking up with yoga

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment
this is me tying the knot with writing

The buildup to this major life event was unceremonious: squashing my thumb in the balcony door.
And the slow and painful recovery that followed.
But even on another inspection by the doctor, it wasn’t broken nor infected.

My mother also had an accident. Five days before me. She fell and was covered in blood, half her face was damaged, her eye thick and closed.
Seventy-two hours later?
Eyes clear, wounds/ skin fully healed, and the only thing that reminded of her accident was one black bruise that had settled itself along her cheek and nose lines.

When the doctor was done with me, she asked me how my mother was doing.
I answered:
“She’s great! It’s one of the reasons I keep thinking something is wrong with me. She recovered from that horrible fall within days. Not dragging it on, like me.”

I heal slower than someone decades older than me and with a fifty percent gene overlap. Good thing I stopped drinking, in response to this accident, because my body is obviously going to need all the help it can get. I did finish what was still in the bottle. Half a glass. I didn’t wanted to throw it out. And I also didn’t want my last glass to be right before my thumb got stuck.
That would not have been festive at all.
I wanted my step to abstinence to be happy, peaceful and conscious.
And it was.

I m now midway in my holiday week, and yesterday was my “active resting day”, as they call that in fitness. With me, that meant socially resting.
I didn’t have anything planned, aside from the doctor’s appointment. 
I went shopping for presents, took myself out for a meal and pondered a lot about my work as a yoga teacher.

The past few weeks I started creating an online yoga program, but it was based on the idea that creating those videos would take the place of a normal yoga practice. After the thumb accident, and my mother falling, I knew I had to do better.
More rest, less work, and a genuine home yoga practice were required, if I planned on getting as old as my mother, without turning into a whining, crackly old lady.
Working seven days a week, or skipping my home yoga practice were not an option anymore.

Seated at the restaurant, counting, scheduling, writing in my notebook, I came to the conclusion that was inevitable but that I could not accept before I had the hard proof on paper.
I had to stop my online yoga program.
The only way I could sustain my yoga business, and focus on writing (more about that later) was if I downsized teaching yoga to the absolute minimum. Which would mean:
– no online yoga program (which cost me fifteen hours a week)
– only create content for my yoga studio blog after I had spare time.

The moment I will get serious with my writing (yes, yes, more about that later) I can spare about five hours a week, for my yoga business.
And there will be times (like now) when that will go entirely to studying my new course topic, as the topic changes every eight weeks.
So I prepare my classes, and also create yoga schedules for my students if they want an outline of what we did in class.
That all comes first.

Which means that a lot of the time those five hours, will already be dedicated to creating my classes and my studio program.
I kept puzzling, planning, writing my notebook between courses, and realized:
Choose writing.
Cut back studio.
PERIOD.

This is the way it has to be.

My ideal would be not doing ANYTHING, ever again for the yoga studio, that wasn’t about creating classes or teaching.
I don’t want to invest in marketing yoga anymore, nor in creating an online program.

Not if I could also put all that effort into something else:
marketing my writing.

Since my books came out, I ve done ZERO.
Absolutely nothing.
At the time it made sense, since at that time in particular I saw myself as a yoga teacher first. It has been my source of income since 2003.
And I knew writers didn’t make any money (unless they accepted assignments) so it made no sense to even try and put my work out there.
But things have changed.
Something bigger is at stake.

Maybe it’s because I don’t feel comfortable fully showing myself as a yoga teacher. I am still, to this day, trying to stay within the lines of what is accepted of a yoga teacher. 

I have chosen.
I am a writer.

Not because I think being a writer is easier, or make me more financially successful. But because it allows me to totally be myself, and to develop as a human being, an entrepreneur, and even a yogi, in the way that suits me. Without having to fit into a box.
It’s a relationship that accepts me, for me.

From this day forward, for better of for worse, in sickness and in health,
I choose to be a writer.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 

 

“You are still holding on. Let go!”

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I never thought of myself as a particularly  good yoga teacher.
Not that there is anything wrong with my teaching skills.
I regard them very highly.

I know how to use my voice, and  my classes are calm and relaxing.
But my personality, my gifts, that which I really want to offer, could offer, and sometimes even do offer, is not what people expect of a yoga teacher.
At least not from a vegetarian, India traveling, retreats teaching, natural fabrics wearing, diligently AM morning practicing yoga teacher;
an image that has been dominating the media.

Nor do I live up to the standards yoga teacher training set for me.
In fact I made it a point not to.
I’ve always felt that there was something innately wrong with behaving the way a yoga teacher was supposed to behave. And yet I ve concluded a million times that despite my pointless efforts to get a daily AM yoga practice the last decade or so;
I would get up at 5AM and snap right into my yoga practice if I would have a corporate job!
And would quit drinking.
And could even go as far as becoming vegan.
Just to prove I was different and not an average corporate employee.

My last post here explains that this is a Rebel tendency.
When yoga is an act of rebellion, I want to do it. With a chance of adding the clean eating and the self-control that is associated with serious yoga practitioners.

{ If you are curious which personality type you are take the test here and/or read my post here }

So although I would probably join the 5 A.M. self-practice yoga class at a glamorous studio, if I worked in a corporate setting;
As a yoga teacher, I can’t possibly make myself do something that is considered best practice for my profession.
Nor adopt habits that are considered mandatory in my industry. In fact, like I said: I make it a point not to do that.

And even when I can see how the AM practice could be beneficial for me? Spending less time at my desk, getting really good at yoga? My 19 year old thighs back? Still not possible. Not going to do it. No matter how many challenges I embark upon.

Now that I know this, I think I have tweaked it for the rest of my life.
It’s something that I’ve toyed with on and off for the last couple of years. But after realizing I am the rebel type, I know I was on the right track, and that this is gonna stick;
My personal, rebellious way of doing a home practice is not normal yoga. But consists of making yoga and fitness videos. It’s monetizable. It’s work. It’s not a proper, moving inward, grown-up practice.
And it still might give me my thighs back too!

Because I ve calculated that at nineteen, I did four one hour workouts a week. Which is exactly the amount of practice I get now as well.

So knowing I had the Rebel tendency, helped me solidify that. But there was something else, beside the lack of self-practice, that was bothering me;
My view on things. My wisdom.

And for at least one whole day, I thought that having the Rebel label attached to them, was the definite verdict I was a bad yoga teacher.
Aside from the quality of my actual yoga teaching, which is good.

But I felt my Rebel status disconnected me from the other tendencies, who were far more common than mine. Sure, I knew I would be able to teach other Rebels how to live a good life. According to their unique set of values. But the system clearly stated Rebels were extremely rare.
So I felt my wisdom was useless to others.

Because my wisdom is based on something that only Rebels “can” do, or want to do; to be completely free of expectations.
To never expect a certain outcome, and instead only do the things which they want to do, on a soul level.
Never expecting anything in return.

And every time I meet a new frustrating situation, a person, a wrong doing, a disappointment, everything, I see it as a sign that I have inner work to do.
As Kylo Ren said it;
“No, no! You are still holding on!”

Frustration, to me, has become a sign I did something expecting a certain outcome. Not because I wanted to – at that moment – be with that person, do that work, spend that time, give that love.
But that I did it because I wanted to be rewarded for it.

“Let go!” Kylo Ren shouts.

So for a brief moment, I thought that my liberating insight was useless. Because I could suddenly see that it was only liberating for me. That the other types of the personality test, would probably not benefit from being free, the way I did.

So if my deepest insights into true happiness were useless to about 95% of other people, then I really was a bad yoga teacher.
I felt horrible.

Until, a little voice in my head reminded me of the great sages of history.
The wisdom of Tantra, Buddhism, Christianity. Had they not all said the same? To enjoy the work for the work.
To detach from the outcome.
To love and to open your heart because that is your way to enlightenment, not because someone will respond exactly the way you want them to.

Had not all of them said exactly the same thing as Kylo Ren?

“No, no! You are still holding on. Let go!”

And I realized that being a Rebel was far more compatible with being a yoga teacher, than I had ever imagined.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

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